Bearing Arms for His Majesty

Bearing Arms for His Majesty
Author :
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Total Pages : 322
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0804750246
ISBN-13 : 9780804750240
Rating : 4/5 (240 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Bearing Arms for His Majesty by : Ben Vinson

Download or read book Bearing Arms for His Majesty written by Ben Vinson and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study uses the participation of free colored men, whether mulatos, pardos, or morenos (i.e., Afro-Spaniards, Afro-Indians, or "pure blacks"), in New Spain's militias as a prism for examining race relations, racial identity, racial categorization, and issues of social mobility for racially stigmatized groups in colonial Mexico. By 1793, nearly 10 percent of New Spain's population was made up of people who could trace some African ancestry—people subject to more legal disabilities and social discrimination than mestizos, who in turn fell below white creoles, who in turn fell below the Spanish-born, in the stratified and caste-like society of colonial Spanish America. The originality of this study lies in approaching race via a single, important institution, the military, rather than via abstractions or examples taken from particular regions or single runs of legal documents. By exploring the lives of tens of thousands of part-time and full-time free colored soldiers, who served the colony as volunteers or conscripts, and by adopting a multi-regional approach, the author is able not only to show how military institutions evolved with reference to race and vice versa, but to do so in a manner that reveals discontinuities and regional differences as well as historical trends. He also is able to examine black lives beyond the institution of slavery and to achieve a more nuanced impression of the meaning of freedom in colonial times. From the 1550s on, free colored forces figured prominently in the colony's military forces, and units of free colored soldiers evolved with increasing autonomy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The author concludes, however, that the Bourbon reforms of the 1760s—which clearly expanded the military establishment and the role of Spanish soldiers born in the New World—came at the expense of free colored companies, which experienced a reduction in both numbers and institutional privileges.


Bearing Arms for His Majesty Related Books

Bearing Arms for His Majesty
Language: en
Pages: 322
Authors: Ben Vinson
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2001 - Publisher: Stanford University Press

GET EBOOK

This study uses the participation of free colored men, whether mulatos, pardos, or morenos (i.e., Afro-Spaniards, Afro-Indians, or "pure blacks"), in New Spain'
Bearing Arms for His Majesty
Language: en
Pages: 320
Authors: Ben Vinson
Categories: HISTORY
Type: BOOK - Published: 2022 - Publisher:

GET EBOOK

This study uses the participation of free colored men, whether mulatos, pardos, or morenos (i.e., Afro-Spaniards, Afro-Indians, or "pure blacks"), in New Spain'
Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Transatlantic World
Language: en
Pages: 2052
Authors: Junius P. Rodriguez
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2015-03-26 - Publisher: Routledge

GET EBOOK

The struggle to abolish slavery is one of the grandest quests - and central themes - of modern history. These movements for freedom have taken many forms, from
The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution
Language: en
Pages: 590
Authors: Robert Wodrow
Categories: Scotland
Type: BOOK - Published: 1830 - Publisher:

GET EBOOK